


take good care

by scorpiod



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Not A Fix-It, Self-Hatred, Sharing a Bed, references to canon suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: Mike goes to visit Stan's wife. He stays longer than he should.
Relationships: Mike Hanlon/Patricia Blum Uris
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: It Rare Pair Secret Santa 2020





	take good care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/gifts).



> 1\. Hi, glorious_spoon! I really enjoyed a lot of the things on your likes list and I tried to combine a good number of them in this fic. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> There's mentions of Stan and Stan/Patty throughout the story, as well as his suicide. I took the liberty of using book Patty's appearance, rather than her actress, as well as incorporating other book details about Stan and Patty's lives together. I hope that's okay! It should be possible to read this without book knowledge.
> 
> I also did research on Jewish mourning customs, and tried to work some of those details in, but if I got anything egregiously wrong, feel free to let me know!
> 
> Title taken from the Lovers song of the same name.

Mike didn't want to miss the funeral, but when Patty Uris opens the door, his explanations and excuses just die in his mouth, all of them sounding more inadequate than the last. 

Patty answers the door without a word, gazing at him with an expectant look on his face, her strong features trained on him, like she’d been waiting for him. She’s a beautiful woman, with dark curling hair falling on her shoulders, dark red-rimmed eyes and a strong nose. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, like she’d been crying for a while, and finally managed to stop. Her black blouse had a tear in it, near the collar of her shirt, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes, standing in the threshold in lavender fluffy socks. He wonders, briefly, if Stan bought her those. Mike wants to peer into the house, look around and see where his friend had been living all these years but prying without being invited feels like a breach of etiquette. He doesn’t want to invade this poor woman’s life. 

Mike has a a satchel of items he brought from the library in Derry, and plate of store bought snickerdoodle cookies in his hands, which makes him feel even more woefully inadequate and ashamed—he should have baked them, could have baked them, but it’s hard to do it out on the road. If Stan’s wife wanted to kick him out, she’d be right to. She’s right to, for so many reasons. 

“Hi,” he breathes, nervousness in his tone, his hands trembling. Mike isn’t good at talking to people; it feels like Derry eroded away that ability from him, left everyone in town thinking he was crazy ( _and he was)_. “We spoke on the phone. I’m Mike Hanlon. I’m a friend of Stan,” he tells her. 

She eyes him cautiously, dark eyes piercing through him. Mike wonders if she forgot he called, in the midst of everything, if he’s just some stranger to her. He wouldn't blame her if she forgot; funerals are hard work.

“You’re late,” she tells him simply, brow furrowing. “I thought you’d be here sooner. Shiva ended yesterday; you didn’t have to bring that.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike stammers, fumbling for an explanation. “I’ve...never left Derry before.” 

She nods, like she can understand what the significance of _never leaving Derry_ before means to him, her eyes downcast, and turns around. Patty leaves the door open but she doesn’t invite him in. 

Mike stays at the threshold. He watches Patty pad down the hallway entrance and through an open archway, disappearing from view. A strange sort of anxiety seizes him, unable to figure out what he should do, what’s the respectful thing, if his very presence is just making things worse for Patty. He leans forward to look around the house, and notices that pictures and mirrors along the wall way are covered up in dark cloth. 

A pang of guilt gnaws at Mike’s heart, guilt and longing; he’d like to see photos of Stan, even now. 

“Take your shoes off,” Patty calls back, and Mike thinks that’s the best invitation he’s going to get. 

  
  


*

  
  


In Stan’s living room, there’s an almost finished puzzle of birds on the coffee table, with only one piece missing. Patty doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t touch it, and Mike tries not to think about it, even as he thinks about how Stan always loved birds. It’s a piece of information that he can easily pluck from the back of his head, thinking of his friends a little obsessively all these years. 

“This is when we were all climbing out of watching Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” he says, sliding over the photobooth photo to her across the coffee table, avoiding the puzzle. Mike is sitting on the living room couch. Patty sits cross legged on the floor, adjacent to him. She grabs the photo from his hand with shaking fingers, and holds it up close to her face. 

“That’s him in the middle,” Mike says. He’s all squished between them, though not as squished as Ben, the rest of them crowding those two in the center. Stan's curly frizzy hair is falling in his eyes and he is smiling at the camera; he looks awkward, but Mike knows he wasn’t awkward, that it was one of the few times all of them weren’t worried about anything, even in the middle of that summer. IT was after them but they were all safe together. 

( _is that why Stan died? They weren’t with him?)_

Mike has many pictures of all them; he doesn’t know if the others do, if the others ever found themselves looking down at pictures of themselves with friends they don’t remember, don’t recognize, or if something in their heart took notice anyway.

He wants to know, wants to believe that. He wants to take comfort in the fact that Stan remembered him almost right away, when he called, that maybe he carried a photo of Mike and Bill and Richie and all the others around, a photo he could pull out and wonder who these people were—but that’s a bad thing, Mike reminds himself. Maybe if the others remembered him, they’d kill themselves too. 

“That’s me in the back,” he says, but he doesn’t want to point himself out. He stands out, only black kid in town. His wide, self-effacing grin made him stand out in the picture even further. Mike remembers being happy just to belong, just to have a crowd, to have a group of friends that wanted to spend time with him.

“How old were you?” she asks.

“Thirteen,” Mike says, and that opens the floodgates. He can’t stop himself from telling her how bad the movie was, how Eddie was throwing popcorn at Richie, Stanley irritated with them both and rolling his eyes, how much Stanley didn’t like the movie but he didn’t complain because the movie was never the point. Stanley would endure so many terrible movies just to be with his friends. 

Mike is laughing. He’s crying. The two emotions have blurred into one, an ache in his chest and a joy that makes him weep. He misses Stan with a powerful sort of longing that he’s felt since he left Derry and now, he thinks that feeling may never go away.

Patty is running her finger over the picture. “He never talked about Derry,” she says. 

Mike thinks she sounds suspicious, glancing up at him, dark eyes fathomless. But he may be paranoid. He’s been paranoid for so long. 

She doesn’t say anything else. It’s a natural question. 

“He didn’t like talking about it,” Mike prefaces. “Derry wasn’t a good place.” 

Patty nods. “He didn’t get along with his parents.”

Mike blinks. That's not the answer he was expecting. “I didn’t know...the Urises had a memorial for him in Derry.”

The moment he says that, he feels guilty, wincing. As if that mattered; when your kid commits suicide, you still honor him, even if you’re on the outs. He didn’t speak much to the Urises, all this time—they didn’t want to talk to him—but he knows Andrea always missed her son. 

Party shrugs, talking to him but not talking to him, staring down at the floor as she says, “They never liked me. My parents never liked Stan either. But it worked between us.”

Mike wants to ask about that, their marriage, why their parents hated each other, but he doesn’t think it’s the right time. She isn’t really paying attention, turning her eyes back to the photograph. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t find him suspicious. He glanced around the living room, trying to find a photo of Stan but they’re all gone, taken down, or covered up. 

"I've been meaning to uncover the photos," Patty says, startling him.

"I didn't mean—"

"It's just hard...I want to see him all the time, and I can't be satisfied with just an image." 

Mike nods, and doesn't press the issue. Stan is one of the best friends he’s ever had but Mike can’t shake the notion that he has no right to him, here in his living room. That he can love the teenage boy he knew but this Stan belongs to Patty. 

Mike isn’t sure what Stan looked like at forty. He’s seen pictures; in the obituary he saw while researching Stan's death, in the occasional google search turning up a headshot on an accounting firm website, on a list of employees. But the photos in Patty’s house are all hidden away, and either way, it’s not like really _seeing_ Stan in the flesh.

Mike wonders what he’d smell like now, what he used to smell like. He liked to imagine Stan would have a woodsy scent. Oak or fine, wood furnish and lemon scented polish. Back home, he always smelled clean, fresh fabric softener, laundered linens. Not clean in the antiseptic way Eddie smelled like, but fresh and gentle like dew on a summer day. 

“Do you have any more?” Patty asks, pulling Mike out of his thoughts. When she looks at him, her eyes are glassy with tears. 

Mike swallows down the lump in his throat. He pulls out old photos from his bag, from high school.

“Stan used to like photography,” he says softly. “He got a professional grade camera for his 16th birthday and really committed to it.”

He remembers Stan, hard at work, frown in his forehead, deeply concentrating on taking a picture. Remembers the dark room he built in his basement, awash with red, and the way he wouldn’t let anyone in but him ( _you’re careful, Stan said to him, you’re not like the others),_ how irritated he got with Richie and Eddie that they wouldn’t take it seriously, but they still posed for him when they asked. 

Ben and Bev were gone by this time, so Stan kept trying to capture them all; a snapshot of Eddie laughing, a photo of Mike blushing, Bill deep in thought, Richie mugging the camera. Trying to keep them all from drifting away. 

“I don’t know if he still likes it now.” He winces, biting his tongue. “Liked it.” 

“He never brought up photography,” she says, humming, lost in thought, barely aware of him. Her fingers curl over the box of photographs, as if to grasp them tight in her grip, and not let go. Mike wonders if she’s going to give them back and feels a sharp flare of jealousy curl in his guts, a wild and wholly unfamiliar emotion he squashes down. 

He doesn’t want her to keep the photos. She has Stan _now,_ older Stan, married Stan. She had Stan longer than he had Stan. She had more of him; all he has is childhood memories and a letter. 

“It’s like he left that part of himself in Derry,” Mike suggests, tapering down on his ugly emotions. 

Patty doesn’t mention his slip. She takes a handful of photographs out of the box and flips through them, one by one. 

She points to a photo of a redhead—Beverly, smiling wide, her eyes no longer haunted, at least for the moment Stan captured. “This one...she called me,” she says. She looks up at him and her eyes are swimming with tears as they stare him down and freeze him in place. Mike, for a moment, feels his chest seize up, like he’s being hit by the force of her grief. His eyes are burning. 

Mike doesn’t know what to say. “From Derry,” he adds.

He waits for her to ask the question that would undo them both. About Derry. About the clown. About his phone call. Mike knows he won’t be able to help himself; he can’t think of a decent enough lie, and he knows the truth will come spilling out, and she’ll never let him back in her house again. 

But it never comes.

Patty Uris stands up and takes the box of photographs. Mike bites down on the urge to rip them from her hands, reminding himself he’s not a little boy, but a man, and he can part with these if he needs to. 

“You can stay,” she tells him, meeting his eyes for one long unbroken minute—Mike doesn’t know what she’s looking for in his eyes, doesn’t know what answers she’ll ask for—and then, tearing up, voice cracking, “I’m sorry I have to go.”

She rushes up the stairs, as if trying to get away from him. Mike doesn’t follow. 

Mike sits and waits for the question that would need answers. 

*

When the sun goes down, Mike thinks of leaving, but she still has the box of photographs, his box of Stan and all the losers. He can’t leave without it. Without at least seeing it again.

Mike sits in the living room waiting for her to come down. He falls asleep there, on her soft periwinkle blue couch, thinking of Stan and blood. 

Mike has a dream about Stanley, working on that bird puzzle in the living room, cross legged on the ground. He’s a boy again, and he’s crying and Mike wants to rush over to comfort him but he can’t reach him. He can’t move. 

He just has to sit and watch Stan cry. 

  
  


*

  
  


In the morning, Patty taps him awake, fingertips light on his shoulder. Mike wakes up easy; the years have turned him into a light sleeper. His body reacts to her touch with a start, pulling him out of his dream world. 

“I’m so sorry,” Patty says, hands over her mouth, cheeks flushing a deep red. “I should have given you the guest room, I should have offered you some food, I should have—”

“It’s alright,” Mike says, reaching out to her, as if to pull her into a hug before he thinks better of it. “I’m intruding. I should...”

He doesn’t say _go._ It just hangs there in the air, waiting. 

Patty stares at his hands, a frown on her face. Mike wonders if she heard him. 

“I have a lot of leftover food,” she says. 

“Oh?” 

“From the neighbors and the people at the synagogue.” Her voice drifts. She runs her hands over her hair, tugging the strands of it out of her face. Her hair is unbrushed and possibly unwashed, though Mike can hardly fault her for that. He’s the one intruding. 

On her fingers, he sees she’s wearing her wedding ring. Mike wonders if there’s a wedding photo, at least. 

“Okay,” he nods, trying not to let that sound like a question. 

“You can have some,” Patty says, gesturing towards what he assumes is the kitchen. “The food!” She glances down away from him, once again tugging a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry, you haven’t eaten, and I have a lot of food, please have some.” 

“Of course,” Mike says, as he gingerly stands up from the couch. His knees ache. There’s a crick in his neck. It was not the best sleep he’s gotten but he’s had much worse. “If that’s okay with you.” 

  
  


*

There is indeed plenty of food. A smorgasbord of casseroles and baked goods and deviled eggs and meat & cheese trays. Mike was pleased to know funeral food was the same everywhere. His grandfather’s and grandmother's funerals were both somber affairs but for a brief moment, Mike got to enjoy the company of his family in his house, a little less lonely.

He serves himself a helping of a potato casserole that tastes a week old. He watches, a bit concerned, as Patty barely eats anything, grabbing a piece of fruit and leaving it at that. 

He doesn’t want to be the pushy house guest though, so he doesn’t say anything except to offer to wash the dishes. 

“You don’t have to,” Patty says, toneless and distant as Mike has already started scrubbing. “It’s not important. I’ve been eating off paper plates.”

“It’s really no trouble,” he says. It wasn’t. Small tasks like these have always been good for putting his mind at ease, and there was something about being Stan’s house, helping out, that made him feel a little closer to Stan.

Her hand brushes against his shoulder, her small hand and fingertips lingering against him. She’s warm, Mike notes, and for a brief moment, he thinks he is Stan, in his place, his position, playing husband. A powerful wave of grief and longing washes over him, his hands trembling, worried he’ll drop some ceramic dish.

She doesn’t say anything, but she keeps resting her hand against him, seeking warmth. 

Mike doesn’t ask to stay. 

Patty doesn’t tell him to leave. 

So Mike doesn’t. He sleeps on the couch again that night, this time with an assortment of blankets and pillows. 

  
  


*

  
  


Mike has another dream about Stan, where he’s looking at Stan from the end of a long hallway. No matter how much he walks, he can’t get closer, always out of reach.

  
  


*

On the third day, Mike hasn’t left yet, and he decides to cook breakfast. There’s food in the fridge, but he thinks it might be nice for Patty to have something freshly made, something she doesn’t have to worry about serving and cooking. 

He settles on pancakes, after finding all the ingredients in her pantry and wonders how often Patty used to cook breakfast for Stan, or if it was the other way around, if he was the cook between them. Stan wasn’t much of a cook back home, but he was a kid; people change. Even Mike’s changed. 

Mike, with a kind of clawing, eager desperation, wants to know everything he missed. What Stan was like in college. What their wedding day was like. What new things he grew interested in, what he hated, what he ranted and raved about. 

He wants to hoard all this information like a hungry dragon, devouring all signs of _Stan was Here,_ like if he consumes him enough, consumes enough parts of Stan, he’ll bring him back to life. 

Patty comes down stairs as he’s setting the table, a few pancakes done, stopping short on the staircase when she sees him. 

“Oh?” she asks. Her brow furrows. Mike kicks himself, thinking, he should have asked, of course he should have asked.

“Sorry,” Mike apologizes, caught. What was he thinking? He’s not her husband. 

“You cook?” Patty’s eyes light up. There’s a ghost of a smile on her lips. “I didn’t know you cooked.” 

Mike shuffles from foot to foot, embarrassed with his own lack of propriety. “I should have asked—”

“It’s not like I’m making anything,” Patty says, sitting down. “I appreciate it. You made pancakes?” 

Mike nods. “I hope...you like pancakes?” 

Patty grins. “I like most things that make my hips fat,” she says, and still smiling, adds, “Stan liked it when I made them with lemon ricotta.” Her eyes soften as she says that but she eagerly eats what he cooked. 

“I’ll have to remember that for next time,” Mike says. 

Something about her smile fills him up inside, like light pouring out of her and into him. They eat breakfast together in comfortable, mutual silence. It makes Mike feel like he did something right, coming here, instead of poking at a wound he should leave well enough alone. If it bothers Patty that a near stranger is cooking for her, she doesn’t show it. If it bothers Patty that Mike is already thinking of a “next time,” she doesn’t act like it. 

Maybe that’s a little reckless of them both. 

  
  


*

Mike stays. He helps clean around the house, doing whatever he can, as if he’s earning his keep. As if, if he does enough for Patty, maybe he can apologize for being responsible for her husband’s death.

 _That’s not true,_ Bill’s voice in his head speaks, _y-y-you didn’t make him do anything._ Bill told him that before he left, in a dark hushed tone. _I know a thing or two about guilt, Mike._

It didn’t matter; Mike couldn’t shake off the idea that he did this. 

So when Mike is straightening up the living room (and he still can’t bear to get rid of the unfinished puzzle in the center), it’s not a surprise when Patty finally asks. It’s only a surprise that she waited so long, that she waits for him to sit down on her couch and take a sip of the glass of water she hands him. 

“What did you say to him?” She asks.

Patty’s eyes are calm and steel, and Mike thinks she was waiting for a moment when the answer wouldn’t break her. He could prolong the inevitable and ask her what she means but he won’t do that to her. She doesn’t need to explain herself. He does her the dignity of not pretending he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

He takes a long drink of the water. Then:

“I told him he needed to come home,” he says. 

“And?” Patty’s arms are folded awkwardly across her chest. Her face is flushed. “What else?”

Mike knows she really means, _why did he kill himself after talking to you_? She doesn't say that. She's too polite to, but he can hear it. 

Mike has outstayed his welcome. 

“I told him I needed him,” he says, “and he asked me if it was happening again.”

Patty clenches her jaw. “If what was happening again? What happened in Derry? What happened to him?”

Mike speaks plainly. “The murders. The children going missing. It started happening again.” 

Patty gasps and takes a step back. 

Mike feels like a monster. He wonders what he must be like to her; she was the last person who spoke to her husband.

“Why did he need to come home for that?”

“To stop it,” he says. 

Patty stares at him, mouth agape. He’s going to tell her about IT, the clown, all of it, and she’s going to realize she’s had a madman as a guest in her home.

( _t_ _hat’s what you are, that’s what you’ve always been, a madman, and you drove Stan to madness and made him kill himself_ )

The voice in his head sounds like IT sometimes. 

“The turtle couldn’t help us,” she says. It comes out softly, and quietly, like smoke letting loose, cutting free. 

Mike isn’t sure what he hears. “Excuse me?”

“He said that in his sleep sometimes,” she steps closer, her eyes narrowing. Curious and angry and heartbroken all at once. “He never wanted to talk about it. He never wanted to talk about his childhood at all. What turtle?”

Mike sighs, and tells her everything. She gets a glass of wine halfway through it, fumbling with it so much that she spills some on the table he just cleaned, and when he’s done telling the tale—about lucky sevens and the losers and Eddie’s death and defeating Pennywise, the monster at the end of his book—she starts crying and gets another drink. 

“Stan always knew,” she says, talking to herself, hands trembling. Her eyes are wet. “Stan always knew and I never asked him about it. I just let him keep his secrets.”

Her last words break on a dry sob. Mike reaches out instinctively and Patty takes a step back. He winces but she’s right; why would she want comfort from the harbinger of her husband’s death?

He pulls his hands away and lays them flat on the table.

“Knew what?”

She shrugs, still crying. “Knew things. Knew the answers to questions before I asked. Knew when something good was coming, when to avoid something or run towards it. He always knew.” 

Mike sucks in a breath. He needs to walk around, get up, _move,_ but he can’t make himself move, struck still and silent. 

“Sometimes the kindest thing you can do to someone is let them keep their secrets,” he manages. The kindest thing he could have done is leave Stan alone. 

“Well, now he’s dead.” Patty’s voice is hot with grief. "So much for secrets."

They’re both silent then; just the sound of Patty’s soft cries and Mike’s heavy breathing. 

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” His tone is gentle. He doesn’t expect anything less. “You don’t have to believe me.”

Patty laughs. “I think we’re all crazy. You, me and Stan.”

He sits there, quietly, listening to her cry. _I’m sorry_ feels inadequate. Everything he has in him just isn’t good enough. 

“I can leave you alone,” he offers, starting to stand up. The way Patty reaches out, her small hand tight on his wrist, painfully tight for such a small hand, shocks him, throws him off guard, giving him no choice but to listen. 

“Don’t. Stay.”

*

Mike falls asleep on the couch again that night. Patty doesn’t tell him to leave. His dreams are empty and opaque, hard to see, hard to navigate through. 

*

Mike waits to be kicked out. 

( _it’s you; you got him killed)_

He does his best to keep himself busy, cleaning up, taking out the trash, doing the dishes or cooking, depending on which one Patty feels like doing. Patty has a hard time focusing lately. She fields phone calls from concerned parties, works on loose ends and bank statements, and spends a lot of time crying in her room or in the bathroom. The least he can do is help clean. 

The bathroom ( _where Stanley took his last bath)_ is spotless. Not a trace left of a horrible tragedy. He doesn’t think Patty has been in here since he died. 

Bev told him about this, her nightmare. The blood on the walls. _Guess Stanley couldn't cut it._

Mike can’t use this bathroom. Something in his chest starts seizing up and he needs to go outside, on the back porch and breathe. 

He stays there for a while, sitting down on a patio chair. It’s a nice back yard; the grass needs to be mowed, and it was a burning hot day, but the sun would be setting soon. There’s two wooden patio chairs on the deck and a table made with opaque glass and an umbrella towering above them. Wind chimes hang by the door. He imagines Stan out here, early morning, coffee in hand, newspaper, looking at birds. Maybe even pointing them out to Patty. 

Did Stan still like birds? He must. 

The sky had started turning dark purple colors when Patty comes out and hands him a glass of wine. Mike stares at it with an eyebrow raised, head cocked. 

“I...I’m sorry if you’re a beer person,” she stammers, eyes widening and Mike immediately feels guilty. “I only have rosé.”

He laughs, full bodied, with his chest. He takes the offered glass of wine and she sits down opposite to him. 

“You’re hosting me. I have no right to complain. And this wine is far tastier than the beer I normally drink.”

Patty laughs. 

“Tell me about him,” she asks. She has a glass of wine in her hands, her fingers tapping compulsively on the glass. “I feel like,” she pauses, setting her glass down, lost in thought. She takes in a deep breath as she runs her fingers over the brim. “I feel like you have this part of Stan that he refused to ever show me or tell me about—”

“He couldn’t have,” Mike reminds her. “No one remembered Derry.”

“He remembered you,” she says. Her cheeks are flushed with alcohol. “He remembered you on the phone, right quick.”

She reaches out to him, grabbing his hand. With dusk, a summer breeze was upon them but her hand was hot, feverish. “Tell me about him.”

So he does; he doesn’t tell her about IT, but all the good stuff he knew about Stan. His hobbies. His caution, as a child, and how brave he could be. The way he was scared to drift away from all of them. The way he tried to take care of them.

“Tell me about him,” Mike asks in return, because he kept tabs on Stan, on all of them, but tracking moments and job promotions and marriages and life events—none of that really tells you anything. 

He wants to know about the man he became, so she tells him. 

*

Patty invites him to bed. 

“Not like that!” She says immediately, noticing his wide-eyed expression. “We don’t have a guest room. It’s his study, and then my hobby room. But you must be getting a crick in your neck or a bad back on the couch.”

She’s not wrong. He’s slept in worse places but he managed to make the library mattress his home, cozier than it ought to be. 

Mike doesn’t know what he’s doing but he agrees. 

They start to sleep in the same bed, but separate, Patty curled up on the right and, Mike on his side, facing the other way, back to her. Sometimes he sleeps on his stomach, one hand reaching out towards her but never quite touching. 

It’s a large bed. Stan’s martial bed. It’s big enough for three but the thought of Stan makes a lump grow in his throat, choking him, stealing words from him. Guilt bites at him, guilt and other things. 

Mike can't remember the last time he was this close to a woman. Or a man. To another person, period. Hugging his friends, inhaling their scent, Bill’s sweaty forehead pressed against his, Ben’s warm embrace, Richie’s shuddering shoulders as he cried—those moments he treasures. Those are warm memories he keeps pressed closed to his chest, and the first time in an eternity he felt anything close to human contact. 

But to lie in bed with someone, and reach out, to have someone at your side waiting for you—Mike didn’t know much he wanted this, even though the last person he should be seeking warmth and comfort from is Patty. 

*

Mike has another dream and he won’t remember this one very clearly when he wakes up, but it’s Stan, in a bath, water leaking from an overflowing tub except it’s blood now, and Mike’s drowning in a sea of Stan’s blood. 

  
  


*

Mike wakes up to birds singing, sun streaming through the window, with his arm wrapped around Patty, her back to him, but clinging on to his arm, holding him tightly to her. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

He’s been here a week. 

  
  


*

They visit his grave. 

Mike places a rock on Stan’s headstone; Patty told him this is Jewish tradition, something they do, instead of flowers—flowers die, but rocks last longer, she said, they’re solid, with Mike nodding solemnly. He already knows, because Stan explained this once to him, when they were kids, after a family funeral. 

Mike wants to honor his fallen friend. 

“I got this from Derry,” he says, pointing out the rock to her. “From the Barrens.” 

From the place of the rock fight, specifically. He went into the creek and grabbed the nicest rock he could find before he left town. It’s not smooth all the way, like some of the rocks left on Stan's grave by others—if it hadn’t burned in the ritual, he would have used Bev’s rock, a way to have a piece of all them at Stan’s grave. 

He knows the others will come here eventually. He knows they’ll all make their journey to Stan’s grave somewhere down the line. 

Patty nods. She’s not wearing makeup but her clothes aren’t all black today, with a white-flower pattern on her dark blouse and mid length skirt. There’s a tear on this blouse too, not on her collar, but over her breastbone, near her heart. 

“A part of home?” She offers. 

Mike grimaces. “I don’t think Stan wanted Derry with him.” 

That’s not how he meant it. But maybe that’s how Stan will take it?

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits. 

“Mike,” she starts, stepping forward. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike says and he’s falling, he didn’t even realize it, or maybe he didn’t fall, maybe he just sunk to his knees, but he can smell the ground and soil and grave dirt, can taste it in the back of his mouth. His stomach lurches and there is nothing in him to puke but he thinks he might be sick. 

“I’m sorry,” he says and then he can’t stop saying it. His face is burning, eyes hot and throat aching. Mike realizes he is crying. “I should have come for you,” he says and then he can’t stop. “I should have come to get you myself. I shouldn’t have called. I should have let you be.”

Patty doesn’t say anything but she wraps her arms around him from behind, her small form against his large one; the image of them must be funny, striking, but Mike grabs on to her arms and doesn’t let go. 

  
  


*

They go to bed together that night. It’s starting to become a comfortable routine. 

But this time, as he’s settling in, before he can tug the blankets over him, Patty stops him. She sits beside him and positions herself so she’s resting her body on him, leaning against his side, his thigh, all overheated fragile warmth, as she leans closer and presses a kiss to his lips. 

Mike lets out a soft sign and isn’t sure what to do—push her away, tell her neither of them are in their right minds, or allow himself the comfort he doesn’t deserve. 

He does neither. He sits in bed and lets Patty Uris kiss him, her mouth wet and tongue warm. He wraps an arm around her, settling his palm against the small of her back. Patty breaks the kiss with a soft sigh, and a half moan, but she doesn’t pull away. They're sharing breaths, gazing in each other’s eyes. Mike is frozen, body taunt with a need for touch and contact. 

“Tell me to stop,” Patty says. 

“Why?” Mike asks. His face is hot, his body is warm and overheated and responding to the touch of her, her skin against his. He runs his hand down her back, stroking the knots of her spine, feeling her shiver under his touch. 

Mike isn’t a virgin but he may as well be—it’s been so long since he’s been with anyone else. It’s been so long since he’s been skin to skin with anyone. He’s not sure what to do. Patty is going to have to tell him. 

“Tell me to stop,” Patty says, more insistent this time, even as she leans down and kisses his neck. The press of her lips, soft against his skin, feels ungodly good. He shives, and shakes, and aches for more. 

“Do you want to stop?” he asks, cupping her face in his hands. He doesn’t know if he should do this. If he’s allowed to do this. It must be some sort of crime, to kiss your best friend’s widow. To want to do more. “Is this something you don’t want?”

Patty starts to cry. 

_Fuck,_ Mike thinks. 

“We can stop,” he says and she throws both arms around him, burying her face in his neck. 

“I’m a bad wife,” she says.

_Oh no._

“No, you’re not,” he says, as she’s shaking around him. He can feel her hot tears against the skin of his neck. Can feel the shape of her mouth press against his throat as she cries. “You’re a good person. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

 _It’s me,_ he thinks _, it’s me, I’m what’s wrong,_ and he can’t help what blurts out of his mouth, it just spills out like bad tea, like bile coming out of his throat. “I’m a bad friend.”

“No, you’re not either,” she pulls back and places both her palms on his face, holding him in her hands. He can’t help but lean into the warm, comforting touch. 

“You’re not, you’re not bad, you didn’t do this,” she says in a rush, breathing heavy and hard, speaking almost a little too fast to understand. She speaks quickly, like it’s imperative to say this, to be understood, like she may die if she doesn’t make herself clear. 

“Patty...” he trails off, because he doesn’t feel right agreeing—it’d be a lie if he did. “You didn’t do anything wrong either,” he manages. 

“I know you loved him,” she says and kisses him again, hard on the lips, the salt of her tears warm in his mouth. 

Mike doesn’t protest. He kisses her back, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. 

  
  


*

  
  


Mike dreams about Stan again, shining and beautiful and free, wind blowing in his hair. They’re standing at the cliff in Derry, where they jumped as kids and where Mike jumped into the water below just a couple weeks ago. They are children again, the age they met and though being thirteen was a terrible age, Mike feels a lightness in his soul, staring at Stan and his curly hair flapping around his face, his bright eyes. 

“Seven is a good number,” Stan says. He sounds like a kid again, voice still cracking. He sounds the way Mike last remembered him. “It’s lucky, you know?”

“Yeah, Stan,” he says with his thirteen year old voice. “I know, Stan the Man.”

Mike approaches him and tentatively, reaches out to slide his palm next to Stan’s, grasping him. His fingers brush against his wrist, smooth, unbroken skin. Stan clings back, wrapping his fingers right around him. 

Mike lets out an exhale. “We miss you,” he confesses, then pauses, shaking his head and says what he really means. 

“I miss you.”

Stan grins at him. “I miss you too, buddy.” 

  
  


*

“When are you going to tell me to leave?” He asks her the next morning, over breakfast. He makes scrambled eggs and she makes toast with strawberry jam. 

He doesn’t want to ask this question. He doesn’t want to disrupt their holding pattern. But he needs to know what to expect. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she tells him. 

Oh. 

“Then I won’t go,” he says. Relief and anxiety war in him. He can’t help but think he’s doing something wrong. He wants to stay, but Mike doesn’t know a thing about romance. 

If this even is a romance. 

He doesn’t think it is. But he leans down and kisses her knuckles. “I’ll stay.” 

  
  


*

The summer ends, as it always does. Be it summer of ‘89, summer of ‘16, it always fades and gives way to September, to autumn, to fall leaves and cooler temperatures. Atlanta is still hot in September, but at night, it turns a little cooler, softer on Mike’s skin, as he and Patty sit on the patio. 

Summer turns into autumn and Mike is still here, haunting Stan’s house, Patty letting him. 


End file.
